BACKGROUND A major concern of physicians treating pain patients with chronic opioid therapy and similar drugs is determining whether the patients are also using illicit drugs. This is commonly determined by urine drug testing (UDT). However, there are few studies on whether or not monitoring patients by this technique decreases illicit drug use. OBJECTIVE To determine if the presence of illic...

BACKGROUND Statistics from the National Trauma Data Bank imply that discretionary blood alcohol and urine drug testing is common. However, there is little evidence to determine which patients are appropriate for routine testing, based on information available at trauma center arrival. In 2002, Langdorf reported alcohol and illicit drug rates in Trauma Activation Patients. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPA...

Illicit drug use may influence cognition in non-affective psychosis. Previous studies have shown better cognition in psychosis with illicit drug use as compared to psychosis only. Possibly, illicit drug using patients have more transient drug-related cognitive deficits. Thus, the aim of the present study was to examine cognitive change the first weeks after admission to a psychiatric emergency ...

AIMS Anecdotal observations suggest the use of illicit drugs takes place amongst recreational divers but, to date, there has been little open debate within the diving community concerning possible prevalence. This study investigated the prevalence and type of illicit drugs used by recreational divers in the United Kingdom (UK). METHODS Anonymous questionnaires were circulated via UK dive club...

AIM The present study investigates the evolution of illicit drug use among Romanian university students from 1999 to 2011. METHODS The study was performed in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, in three phases: in 1999 (T1), in 2003 (T2) and in 2011 (T3). The study was carried out by means of anonymous questionnaires among university students aged 19-24. RESULTS The results show that among girls the life...

Objective: To review what is known about young people’s drug use in Australia and to evaluate whether illicit drug use has become normalised among Australian youth. Method: Survey data and social research findings on young people’s illicit drug use are reviewed and evaluated against the criteria of the normalisation thesis. The utility of the normalisation thesis is assessed in the Australian c...

BACKGROUND This study is an empirical assessment of the impact of the drug decriminalization policy followed by Portugal in July 2001, on the price of illicit drugs. METHODS The analysis is performed using a difference-in-differences approach and the Synthetic Control Method in order to construct a synthetic control unit from a convex combination of countries. RESULTS The results suggest th...

OBJECTIVE Among Finnish adolescent twins, we compared (a) a model that describes a direct impact of liability to tobacco use on cannabis and other illicit drug use with (b) a model that included a shared underlying liability for these substances. Furthermore, the extent to which genetic and environmental influences contribute to the covariation between liabilities to use these substances was ex...

BACKGROUND Ecstasy use is prevalent among young people and often co-occurs with other drug use, but little is known about the past 12-month and lifetime psychiatric comorbidity and specific additional drug abuse among young adult ecstasy users in the general population. To provide this information, we compared current ecstasy users to former users, other illicit drug users, and non-illicit drug...

BACKGROUND This study examined the relationships between self-reported childhood sexual abuse (CSA) and drug-related outcomes in an Australian twin panel. METHOD A semi-structured psychiatric interview was conducted in 1996-2000 by telephone with young adult Australian twins (mean age 29.9 years). Data reported here are from 6050 twins who responded to both CSA and drug-related items. RESUL...